Prepping my First Region

[That Retro Guy 321]

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I probably should explain something about myself.  I am very easily distracted by other games.  The plan was to start a game in each of the following games:  Civilization III Complete, SimCity 4 Deluxe, Master of Orion II, and Roller Coaster Tycoon II.  I also play Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online.  I have also downloaded the client which allows me to walk around City of Heroes which is a defunct game . . . there are no bad guys or missions to run, but it's nice to walk/fly around and visit all of the zones again.  I miss this game terribly.  Anyway, once all of these games was started, I'd set some time aside each day to play one of the games.

On top of that, I have a MAME program which allows me to play some classic arcade video games from the 1970s and 1980s on my PC . . .  Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Frogger just to name a few.

Meanwhile at my job, I am currently doing the work of 2 people until they can get someone else hired and trained.  I haven't had a day off in over a month.

However, there's a light at the end of tunnel.  So with my city, I was thinking of putting all of the Industrial zones into City A with the Power Plant, Water facilities and Landfills. I would then move the Commercial down to where the Industrial is currently so I have more room for Residential.  I'm thinking of making City C a quaint coastal Resort town.  All Commercial would be Low Density with a little bit of Medium.

Would this work?

Once again, I apologize for my absence.  

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

3 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

So with my city, I was thinking of putting all of the Industrial zones into City A with the Power Plant, Water facilities and Landfills. I would then move the Commercial down to where the Industrial is currently so I have more room for Residential.  I'm thinking of making City C a quaint coastal Resort town.  All Commercial would be Low Density with a little bit of Medium.

Would this work?

First I had to scroll back to find this:

On 16/01/2018 at 4:34 AM, That Retro Guy said:

So I figured out exactly what I want to do with my first Region.

First, the Region:

(Since I'd long forgotten how you'd arranged the alphabet.)

 

In my experiments I've found that balance is the key so be sure that the ratio of Sims to jobs is appropriate and feel free to have more available jobs than there are indefatigable workers. Spreading the city parts among different tiles means you have to open, run a year or two, save, close and repeat for each adjacent tile so the data of what is nearby gets updated.

In one particular experiment I had a long, narrow region with 10 tiles. I created about 50 jobs in the first tile and ran a road thru the other 9 so there were connections from end to end. Residential would not grow in that last tile until I made sure there were potential jobs in all the ones in between. So a key point is they would not leave their home tile until they perceived a potential job in the adjacent tile. (Said potential jobs were a bus station on it's own street not connected to the main road.) Once grown in that last tile they dutifully claimed Distant Industries as their job. (Checked with a MySim.)

Now I see them leaving the residential tile and go check in the industrial one at the other end of the region. None are coming in. What I learned is I had to open, run, and save 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 in sequence to propagate the incoming residential workers to tile 1. Then that increased demand and I grew more jobs in tile 1. Now the reverse was needed to convey the new job openings all the way back to tile 10 by entering each succeeding adjacent tile, running some time, and saving the tile till I got back to the residents.

In your layout you'll only need to toggle between adjacent tiles as you begin, but keep this in mind. The data moves by a carrier pigeon that has to visit and rest in each intervening tile for each direction you need to propagate the data.

[That Retro Guy 321]

5 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

In your layout you'll only need to toggle between adjacent tiles as you begin, but keep this in mind. The data moves by a carrier pigeon that has to visit and rest in each intervening tile for each direction you need to propagate the data.

So, basically, each time that I play, I should run both City A and City C for over a month each for the data to catch up, right?  When I begin, I will start in City A to put down the Power / Water and the Landfill and the roads leading to City C.  Of course, I'll build the Power Line connection as well as the Water Pipe connection to City C. The game needs to run for a month before the Neighbor Deals appear, right?

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

In the early stages a month of running will prolly be sufficient. You may find tho that the traffic in or out takes 6 months to catch up which is why I suggest a year or two to be safe. I should clarify that you don't need to jump back and forth between tiles every couple of years, but that is prolly a good minimum to run any given tile. And for the utility connections those seem to be recorded instantly. As I recall I've set those up with both on pause and they still pop in ready to go. The main thing with selling power, water, or trash service is that the selling tile needs to have a sufficient extra unused amount or the game won't allow the deal.

[That Retro Guy 321]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

but that is prolly a good minimum to run any given tile.

You used the word 'tile' there.  By tile, you mean the City map, right? 

Hey, my 100th post! 

  Edited July 27, 2018 by That Retro Guy  
I just realized that this was my 100th post!

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

1 minute ago, That Retro Guy said:

You used the word 'tile' there.  By tile, you mean the City map, right? 

Yes. City map = City tile = tile. Then inside the tile I used the Maxis word cell for each square.

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

1 hour ago, That Retro Guy said:

Hey, my 100th post! 

We have just the place for that! The Milestone Thread

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I had to open, run, and save 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 in sequence to propagate the incoming residential workers to tile 1. Then that increased demand and I grew more jobs in tile 1. Now the reverse was needed to convey the new job openings all the way back to tile 10

I've experienced the first part, where workers must find paths across each city-sector. However, I am skeptical of the reverse. I've seen thousands of lemmings, er, sims jump into the void when there were hardly any jobs to be had on the other side. The mere fact that nobody's been bounced back seems to be enough to draw more.

I think the "time" needed to find paths is CPU time, not necessarily game calendar time, so it would prolly make more sense to say "run the game for 2 minutes" (or some such) rather than "run for 2 game years." In other words, the amount of game time needed could be very slippery, depending not just on the complexity of the city but the speed you run the game (or so I've been told).

[That Retro Guy 321]

14 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

In the early stages a month of running will prolly be sufficient.

Oops!  I meant year, not month.

[Alavaria 32]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

I've experienced the first part, where workers must find paths across each city-sector. However, I am skeptical of the reverse. I've seen thousands of lemmings, er, sims jump into the void when there were hardly any jobs to be had on the other side. The mere fact that nobody's been bounced back seems to be enough to draw more.

 

Yeah, I've seen 50,000 people cram into a place that had max 40,000 jobs in it, and even when running the city with the jobs so the game should "know" that the commuters aren't getting to work, it still lets the people in the city with residential keep running through.

 

Due to how rails get congested and slow down, I've been wondering if it's possible to use ferries to get around it (ie: replacing rail connections with "canals" and use ferries) as those don't get congested? Not sure how fast they are considered to be though.

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

36 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

Not sure how fast they are considered to be though.

Other than the transit switch (time) cost of entering and exiting the ferry port they are infinitely fast.

[That Retro Guy 321]

So:  When I start, I have to begin in City A, and lay down the power/water station, the landfills, the roads, the Industrial zones, and maybe a Police Station, Fire Station, and Hospital.  I also need to make the power line and water pipe connection to City C.  I'll enact the Legalized Gambling ordinance in City A, and even build the Casino (right next to the Police Station for max coverage).  Heck, I might even make a Passenger Train line from the Res/Com in City C to the Industrial in City A or wouldn't that work correctly?

How much Industrial should I zone to start with?   How long should I let it run before starting City C?  Or is there a better way to start City A that I don't know about?

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, @CorinaMarie, what exactly is above your avatar but below the words 'Rural Architect'?  Is it an insect of some sort?  Or maybe a tractor?

[Alavaria 32]

2 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

So:  When I start, I have to begin in City A, and lay down the power/water station, the landfills, the roads, the Industrial zones, and maybe a Police Station, Fire Station, and Hospital.  I also need to make the power line and water pipe connection to City C.  I'll enact the Legalized Gambling ordinance in City A, and even build the Casino (right next to the Police Station for max coverage).  Heck, I might even make a Passenger Train line from the Res/Com in City C to the Industrial in City A or wouldn't that work correctly?

@CorinaMarieHow much Industrial should I zone to start with?   How long should I let it run before starting City C?  Or is there a better way to start City A that I don't know about?

I find that as long as you get to a "stable" point (ie: not losing money, while running everything), I tend to sit around until I have educated up all my "starting" sims. So that means I want them to have their elementary school, high school, library, college and museum (adjust sliders on everything). Ideally also grow without the high-wealth until unlocking the large schools.

 

This lets you grow your industry city with mostly high-tech and maybe some manufacturing. In fact, the odd benefits of separating homes from jobs also applies to commercial, especially if you set it up so that all the rails go past your commercial. (Though they can do decently even with low customers....)

===================

As for running each city, the one with jobs only really needs you to let the buildings grow, this suffices for the game to allow residents in the other city to commute in. I spend most time in the residential city because education takes so long, and there's all these civic buildings they need which you can micromanage. You can also do some of the You-Drive-It missions to unlock things super easily, like university (better than the college, also gives you high-tech cap relief for your industry) and a bunch others,

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

Here's a general idea to get two city tiles to work with each other. I've set up tiles C & A in the same positions as your region. In A I drew power lines from corner to corner to find the center and then laid it out with room for a temporary residential area on the left. There is a water pump there with a pipe running parallel to the railroad tracks. Zoning is high density industrial:

 

Turn on time and let it run until ID demand is exhausted:

 

Zone and grow residential in the temp area. This is so we don't have to go back and forth between city tiles as many times.

 

Zone and grow more industry. (Water pipes are laid underneath.)

 

Add more residential and grow:

 

Zone and grow more industry:

 

Add a landfill:

 

Now demolish all of the temporary residential leaving only the water pump.

 

Make a neighborhood connection for power and water and poke thru a road for the garbage deal. I zoned two commercial and one residential there so the Sims of that lone house would have jobs.

 

Having saved and exited to the region we are now in tile C. Initiate all three deals.

 

Zone and grow residential:

 

Demand is up for industrial again. Go back to city A, zone and grow more till ID demand is gone.

 

Since we are losing money at a phenomenal rate we need to prepare to earn two NIMBY rewards. Zone enough residential to get past the 500 Sims population threshold for the Missile Base. (The Toxic Waste Dump only needs us to poorly manage our money.)

 

I also placed a Large Fire Station to be ready for emergencies and then ran time till I got both negative rewards.

 

Here's how it looks now and showing 1,736 Sims commuting in from tile C.

 

Nix the residential cause we don't need it now:

 

Increase any deals it will allow:

 

Back in C, run a water pipe:

 

Zone and grow some medium residential:

 

Run time till res demand for housing is kaput:

 

Back to A, zone and grow more smelly factories:

 

Run time till no more will more grow:

 

Back in C, run time to let any residential upgrade to larger sizes:

 

Zone a wee bit of high density:

 

Let it grow:

 

Go next door and let time run. Add a second power plant and water pump when needed.

 

Now back to C again. Zone more high density:

 

And let it grow:

 

Ofc, you can add in education in the process and have the adjacent tile start moving towards manufacturing and high tech as you do all of this. The idea I'm presenting is basically the basic basics of how to get two tiles playing nicely with each other.

 

Edit: I forgot this part:

10 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, @CorinaMarie, what exactly is above your avatar but below the words 'Rural Architect'?  Is it an insect of some sort?  Or maybe a tractor?

It is a tractor.

[That Retro Guy 321]

@CorinaMarie, you are the best!  I mean,  WOW!  Just WOW!

I just want to make sure that I'm seeing things correctly . . . Do the Passenger Trains and the Freight Trains run on the same track?  And would I just have to make sure that I have a Passenger Station for the Passenger Sims to embark/disembark and a Freight Station for the Freight to be loaded/unloaded?  Or did I miss the second Rail somewhere?

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

1 minute ago, That Retro Guy said:

Do the Passenger Trains and the Freight Trains run on the same track?

The way I set this up they are running on the same track. Advanced technique would be to have separate tracks for Passengers and Freight. You would just make sure that neither could get to the other.

[Alavaria 32]

Hmm, what I did was have everything just running on one tile, which avoided needing the "Business Deals". While Dirty Industry and low wealth commercial are not easy to break even on, if you make the second city when your residents are already educated and want high-tech and high-wealth commercial, then it's easy to have the second city be quite profitable from the very start.

 

Though it's much slower, as you basically grow to cover the cost of utilities and ordinances and then sit for like, two or three generations (so even the low-wealth are in the top education bracket). And then each time you do the jobs-residential cycle, you need to again wait two or so generations... though there's no pressure at all once you've gotten set up (I messed around constantly looking at commuters and chuckling as they lemminged into the black hole that is the border).

 

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

The way I set this up they are running on the same track. Advanced technique would be to have separate tracks for Passengers and Freight. You would just make sure that neither could get to the other.

I actually thought that some rail systems are used by both types of train... I'm actually wondering if standard rail is less of a hassle than monorail, if slower. But then I'm looking at ferries in order to allow, who knows, hundreds of thousands if not millions of commuters (CAM and a Large Tile with the highest density).

 

======================

Basically, the Jobs city ONLY sees demand coming from a population that is max educated and the wealthiest possible (+ extra from extrapolation).

And the Homes city ONLY sees demand from employers who are the highest wealth possible (+extra from extrapolation).

Super safe (minimal abandonment, incoming demand never changes** since it's from another city), easy to control (because everyone commutes out from home, and employers don't care so much about getting employees) and you can turbocharge each cycle thanks to the extrapolation mechanic.

 

**instead of people getting educated, changing the makeup of your commercial/industrial, which changes the jobs... instead now it's a cycle that goes in discreet steps. And you have the "extrapolation" which adds some fudge factor if you need it. Really stable, if boring because each residential step means building the homes and then sitting as nothing changes but their educational level... and you moving sliders since aging means they will want more of different education as you go.

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

32 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

Hmm, what I did was have everything just running on one tile, which avoided needing the "Business Deals".

I, too, personally tend to play with my tiles basically self sufficient. My example tutorial is for Retro's desire to have all residents in one tile and industry and utilities in another. That's often recommended by many players as well. Ofc, I've laid it out to show the essential part of managing demand and growing each tile. For a real region it could use much better placement of everything and education and so on.

 

32 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

I actually thought that some rail systems are used by both types of train...

Here's where I'm pretty much out of my element. I've really only used the default Maxis rail (now re-skinned via NAM) and for those I know both Passenger and Freight trains can run on the same tracks as long as a their type of station touches it. There's also elevated rail which I believe can connect to the subways and is prolly passengers only. Also monorail that gets its own type of train and is passengers only. I believe NAM can also add Trams which might be a type of rail, but I did a custom install and didn't select them. (I went with some basic things till I get the hang of it without being overwhelmed.)

 

32 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

But then I'm looking at ferries in order to allow, who knows, hundreds of thousands if not millions of commuters ...

The one thing about oodles of ferries is the potential for eternal commuters via them. I'd suggest keeping an eye on those silly little Sims.

[Alavaria 32]

13 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

The one thing about oodles of ferries is the potential for eternal commuters via them. I'd suggest keeping an eye on those silly little Sims.

My suspicion about the ferry problem and eternal commuters (by looking at my pathways**) is that things like a lake at the corner act like a super intersection (eg: three regions meeting in a lake it will connect each to the other two). We're very careful when highways, for example, touch borders (the game asks you if you want a connection) but possibly less so with water, as the connection is just there if water touches border.

My plan is to use waterways like canals (water-highways) which are very controlled in where they touch a border. Thus, if you imagine a non-eternal-commuter set of highways, but then they're now only waterways, there should also be no issue.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

7 hours ago, Alavaria said:

My plan is to use waterways like canals (water-highways)

I've tried that, but I often find that bridges won't let me build high enough for ferries. It can be maddening to do enough landscaping to make land high enough but all of the connections work, especially with a restrictive slope mod.

BTW, PEG made something called a water taxi (like a bus stop). I think it runs on the PEG canal mod decorative / park "water", but I've never used them.

[Alavaria 32]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

I've tried that, but I often find that bridges won't let me build high enough for ferries. It can be maddening to do enough landscaping to make land high enough but all of the connections work, especially with a restrictive slope mod.

 

Good points, though I think you could pass subways underneath (assuming deliberately shallow water, anyway) and NAM includes the "high monorail" with appropriately high bridge, so that might work just fine (connects to normal level via puzzle piece).

 

Depending on now narrow you can make these, it might be possible to have power "teleport" across given it bridges 4 tile gaps. Of course depending on border connections, you might connect things on the "outside" and try to avoid creating islands. Might look odd, but if the ferries are infinitely fast, making them take obscene paths might be amusing, yeah?

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

6 hours ago, Alavaria said:

I think you could pass subways underneath (assuming deliberately shallow water, anyway) ...

Or you could use the Underground Depth Mod and then not worry about how deep the water is. (Use the THL_Depth_Underground_Mod Radical.dat file for extreme topography.) Or FLUP the roads under the water. See @Ro-Bo's How to Build Underwater Tunnel Using Flexible Underpasses (FLUPs) guide.

 

6 hours ago, Alavaria said:

Depending on now narrow you can make these, it might be possible to have power "teleport" across given it bridges 4 tile gaps.

You could also test drive the Marrast Underwater Cable Kit or the (Nearly) Invisible Underwater Power Connection Lots.

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

@Alavaria

I decided to gather some empirical data on the Ferry travel speed versus Driving the whole distance on a Road. I also tested @11241036's (Nearly) Invisible Underwater Power Connection Lots which work perfectly as advertised.

To start I created a river and set it up so the Sims have two possible routes on which to travel from their homes to the farming jobs:

 

Power grid showing it does travel underwater:

 

Traffic view to better illustrate where the Roads are:

 

Run some time and sure enough all the Simizens prefer the water route:

 

Disclaimer first: I've set the Commute Time Graph Scaling Factor way, way higher than the NAM default. That's ok because all we want to see is a comparison using the same scale (whatever that might be).

 

And here's how it looks with all workers riding the boat:

 

Next I bulldozed out a section of the Road leading from the Ferry to the Sims's agricultural endeavors:

 

In time they all take the Road route to work:

 

Commute time graph updated:

 

Rebuild the Road section and they start altering their route:

 

And in time they are all sailing again:

 

Final commute time graph:

 

So, it is obvious that using the Ferries are a quicker means of travel.  The increase wasn't as much as I expected, but could prolly be attributed to the Transit Switch Entry Cost of entering and exiting the Ferry. It does make sense that there should be a delay of loading the boat while waiting for it to fill up before it leaves its little port.

Attached is the large city tile in case you want to conduct further tests. This will have a dependency of the underwater power transfer conduit thinger.

City - Ferry vs Road.sc4

Edit: A little Oops. I had misaligned the underwater power transfer so I plopped a single grass lot to conduct the power from the Windmill to it. Turns out I used one of my own modded lots and so it'll show up invisible without my file. Hidden picture of its placement:
 

Spoiler

 

(And it looks like I placed the underwater lots backwards. Those little concrete gizmos should be on the banks of the river and not out in the middle.)

Lighthouse Grass Cost Minus One.dat (If downloading the attached city tile file.)

[Alavaria 32]

8 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

@Alavaria

So, it is obvious that using the Ferries are a quicker means of travel.  The increase wasn't as much as I expected, but could prolly be attributed to the Transit Switch Entry Cost of entering and exiting the Ferry. It does make sense that there should be a delay of loading the boat while waiting for it to fill up before it leaves its little port.

 

Yes this is interesting though, if your statement about speed (ferry=infinite) is correct, the ferries will be a substantial improvement over really long distances (say corner-to-corner on Large city) over any other transportation network when the latter get congested. Essentially, it scales super well.

 

As for the Transit Switch Entry Cost, it might be set not for the delay on getting on a boat, but because it must stand in for the *entire* journey. Infinite speed and no congestion. Thus, to avoid excessive use of ferries on short journeys, it's made to that sims will also use roads....

 

Unfortunately, this has the odd side effect of making ferries better for long distances (fixed cost) and for large volumes (fixed cost). It means rather than subways or monorails, if you must move ridiculous amounts of commuters great distances, everyone should use ferries.

That's hilarious... and allows creating pointlessly high density all-residential Large cities with maximum commuting.

[That Retro Guy 321]

On 7/28/2018 at 7:42 PM, CorinaMarie said:

I've set up tiles C & A in the same positions as your region.

@CorinaMarie, you created a Region with just 2 cities?  How did you do that?  My Region in the original post is homemade, but for the life of me,  I can't remember how I did it.         And you are an inspiration!      I love what you did here, and how you explained how to do it, and I appreciate your efforts.  Thank you!  

I'm beginning to think that my Region is a bit ambitious and that I really should start with a smaller Region with each city being self-sufficient (for the most part).  This whole thing of having Industrial only in A and having the peeps commute from C to A to work is an advanced notion.  I need to start with the basics, and work my way up.  I need to learn how to crawl before trying to pilot the TARDIS.   I will definitely revisit this Region once I get some experience under my belt.  After all the time that it took me to make that Straight-Edge Coastline (not to mention the Highway and Overpass), I'll definitely come back to it at some point in the future.

I just wish that SimCity 4 Deluxe came with a Random Terrain Generator like all of the previous SimCity games did.

  Edited July 31, 2018 by That Retro Guy  
More to say . . .

[CorinaMarie 29,867]

On 7/30/2018 at 11:32 PM, That Retro Guy said:

@CorinaMarie, you created a Region with just 2 cities?  How did you do that?

Not quite since those are medium size. I created the region with the same layout as yours:

Tile B is also in the same place as yours, but you can't see its label cause it's hidden behind the A popup. And the difference in color is because having gone into B, C, A, & D they took on colors from the terrain mod I use.

It's all about the bumpy configuration. Or, rather the config.bmp file which controls how the tiles are divided. The smallest region you can have is a single small tile which be a single red pixel in the config.bmp. The definitive guide for that is Config.bmp: How to Make it Yours by @Birdin.

 

On 7/30/2018 at 11:32 PM, That Retro Guy said:

I'm beginning to think that my Region is a bit ambitious and that I really should start with a smaller Region with each city being self-sufficient (for the most part).

Either or both are fine IMO. I often create special regions simply to test out ideas. Then you can go in and just try out things with no pressure to make it beautiful and there you can learn what works and what doesn't. Another thing: You may have seen many peeps mention testing new mods or bats or lots in a sandbox region. That's simply a region in which you aren't actually playing where you can see how something works (or doesn't).

One of mine looks like this mess:

 

On 7/30/2018 at 11:32 PM, That Retro Guy said:

I just wish that SimCity 4 Deluxe came with a Random Terrain Generator like all of the previous SimCity games did.

Yeah, it sucks they didn't include that. There was a tutorial some time ago where the chick used pictures of clouds as the basis for a random, rolling hills region. You can check it out here if you are curious. Then, ofc, you can get maps from the STEX. One such map that can be rendered right into the game using a grayscale image is Parva Montes, et Flumina by @Cyclone Boom. It was created using a custom code tweaked program and provides level terraces for ease in building combined with hills and rivers for a realistic look overall. The 4 x 4 large tile version is an ideal size to start with because it has enough room to explore while not being overwhelming.

Here's the custom bump shaded picture using SimEarth coloring:

While CB didn't provide the SimCity 4 color topographical variation image for the 4 x 4 here's the one for the 12 x 12:

 

I've also posted maps using this same region generator program with the most recent being this map and it is the one I'm currently playing on.

[Alavaria 32]

12 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

This whole thing of having Industrial only in A and having the peeps commute from C to A to work is an advanced notion.  I need to start with the basics, and work my way up.  I need to learn how to crawl before trying to pilot the TARDIS.

Yeah though, ironically it seems a bit more forgiving as your people are less likely to abandon since their job destination is always the same source (border, the other city's demand for workers is "frozen") and in the same place (border). Though potentially congestion can mess you up. Then again, passenger rail has both a high speed and high capacity, and the stations can take in cars, so it's perfect.

 

Also getting workers to employers is a problem you only deal deal with in the residential side, the other side doesn't seem to care much, and the game will happily send commuters even if they can't actually get to work (because that's another city, and it only simulates travel within the city you play, except "to/from the border)

 

==============

 

I'm considering starting a new region, but with large tiles. Maybe something with a lot of little islands so I can continually "reclaim" land from each little city to expand outwards (obviously commuting via ferry will have to be carefully controlled though!) until the island nation becomes transformed into a single large mass with canal waterways (since city of venice or something)

 

Oh, like right from this site:

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

10 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

While CB didn't provide the SimCity 4 color topographical variation image ...

Oops. Looks like I missed that out for some reason.

I've now generated both additional topo previews and uploaded them to my map.

Here's the 4 x 4 one:

For anyone wondering, the idea here was to recreate the terrain preview from the game's mini map. The colours represent each elevation, and then it can be compared to the satellite (SimEarth) variation with the bump shading effects. It then aims to represent what the map could believably look like in the real world. In terms of what SC4 will actually process, it'll be the grayscale bitmap file which can be rendered using the internal Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R method, or using SC4Mapper.

As follows:

Spoiler

A) In the game

1. Extract the zip archive for the size version you'd like to use into your SimCity 4 Regions folder.
2. Start the game and open the Parva Montes, et Flumina region.
3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R to open the game's map rendering window.
4. Browse to the grayscale image in your Regions folder.
5. Select and click OK to start the rendering process. Once done, it's done!

Note: Whilst in progress, it's recommended to leave the rendering to complete uninterrupted.

B) Using SC4 Mapper (or other compatible program)

1. Make sure you've downloaded and installed SC4 Mapper 2013.
2. Extract / copy the grayscale image to a convenient location.
3. Open the program and click Create Region.
4. In the list of import formats, choose Grayscale image.
5. Browse to select the grayscale (BMP) file.
6. Click OK to confirm the size.
7. A preview of the region will be shown. Next click Save Region.
8. Confirm the name of the region (can always be changed later), then click OK.
9. Once SC4 Mapper has finished rendering each tile, close the program.
10. Start SimCity 4 and open the region. Done!

Note: At first the region thumbnails will contain abstract colour shades. Don't worry, this is perfectly normal and is due to how Mapper processes renders. When opening & saving each tile, it'll update the preview accordingly.

[That Retro Guy 321]

OK.  Back to basics . . . the Region is now just 2 Medium Tiles next to each other (I would certainly hope so, anyways).  I decided that Small tiles are just too small.

Limistear is the Irish word (according to Google Translator) for the word 'area'. (Yes, I know that there's supposed to be an small mark above the e, but what can you do?)

Now, I haven't touched either city (which will be named Limerick and Kilarney, respectively).  It would be kind of nice to have a small meandering river running through both cities and maybe some soft rolling hills, and of course, lots of trees.  Is there a tutorial video on how to do such things?  I've tried the God Mode in-game, but I can never get things to look right.  The river doesn't have to be deep enough or wide enough to worry about ferries  (umm . . . I meant the boats that are called ferries)    , but any help is always deeply appreciated.

And yes, I remembered how to make a custom Region.  Actually, I re-found the YouTube video that showed me how.  Am I allowed to give the link to the YouTube video on this forum or would that be a violation of Forum by-laws or something? 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

3 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Limistear is the Irish word (according to Google Translator) for the word 'area'.

Cool. There sure can be some creative map names from using common word translations.

 

3 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

(Yes, I know that there's supposed to be an small mark above the e, but what can you do?)

So, I couldn't help but take up the challenge...

I've tested by attempting to rename a new region from Limistear to Limistéar with the fancy 'e'. First opening up the region.ini file which is automatically created for new tiles, along with the folder. Then I pasted Limistéar into the Name variable as follows:

[Regional Settings]
Name = Limistéar
Terrain type = 0
Water Min = 60
Water Max = 100

However upon saving, I tried to load the region and found the name got truncated at "Limist". My initial reaction was I thought SC4 may not support non-standard characters which don't conform to ASCII. But when I tried creating a new region and using Ctrl+V to paste in "Limistéar" (without quotes), I found that the name did show up and was preserved. This got me wondering whether there was a difference in the file format of the INI file where the name is set. So I opened both in a file comparison tool and noticed how the config SC4 had created was 91 bytes, with mine which I manually edited 1 less at 90 bytes.

While that may sound trivial on the face of it, in techy terms, that's a huge difference!

Next I opened each in Notepad++ (an advanced version of Windows Notepad). A status indicator told me the working 91 byte file was using a mode called "ANSI as UTF-8". Basically there are ways of encoding a text file which allows special characters to be saved or read by programs. So then I went to the Encoding options and after a process of elimination found the Encode in UTF-8 without BOM did the trick, and that's what SC4 must use by default for special characters.

When saving using Windows Notepad with UTF-8 mode enabled, it made the file 94 bytes in size. This caused the config entry inside to get duplicated by the game, and the region reverted to the of name its folder. I found the difference here was the type of encoding, and it seems to only like it without the "BOM". (Whatever that means.)

Anyhow, if you'd like to use this, simply copy in the following config file into your "Limistear" region folder and overwrite the existing one:

region.ini 

(The region's folder could also be renamed, but that isn't necessary.)

 

3 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

It would be kind of nice to have a small meandering river running through both cities and maybe some soft rolling hills, and of course, lots of trees.

As one possibility, you may wish to give SC4Terraformer a try. I've personally not explored this program in a great amount of depth, but the benefit over God Mode terraforming is it allows seamless blending between tile boundaries. There are a range of brush tools included to allow painting rivers and hills in the same way as in the game. Then also a few tools which apply to the region as a whole such as erosion, smoothening, and raising/lowering the land height.

There might be others, but the best tutorial I can find is this one. Sadly though it's missing the images, so alas, it probably isn't as useful as it once was.

The basic steps are to open the existing region, select any tiles to protect from changes (in this case for a 2x1 region it'd be none), and then there is a live preview of all the changes made using whichever tools. The navigation works using the arrow keys, and holding Ctrl allows the angle of the perspective to be moved in the chosen direction. There's also an edge scrolling feature like in SC4. It includes a handy Undo tool which allows the last alteration to be reverted. That's just for the one step though, so it's worth keeping in mind before proceeding with subsequent changes. Once done, hit Save from the "File" menu (or use Ctrl+S), and then it'll render out the tiles.

Here's a preview of the UI with the Maxis Timbuktu region shown:

Loading the region in the game and it'll show up initially with the abstract colours. But as with SC4Mapper created regions, this is just due to the snapshot previews and they will be updated with the actual preview once saving each tile from the game.

With trees, there's a trick using the flora blast command which might come in useful for planting these evenly per tile.

 

3 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Am I allowed to give the link to the YouTube video on this forum or would that be a violation of Forum by-laws or something?

Sure, that's perfectly fine.

Pasting the video into the editor and it should auto resolve into the embedded player. Or you're welcome to add it via a regular text link too if preferred. With YouTube videos or any external site content for that matter, the only thing we'd be remotely concerned about are items unsuitable for Simtropolis as a city-building community. As a general guideline, anything which would be rationally relevant to post here like a mapping tutorial, is encouraged to link from here too.